Property taxes along Atlanta's proposed Beltline -- a 22-mile loop of park and trails ringing downtown -- are rising sharply, threatening to displace the poor that live in adjacent areas.
"A new study by a nonprofit housing group claims that land values are rising so quickly around Atlanta's proposed Beltline that the resulting property-tax increases threaten to drive thousands of poor people from their homes."
"If the city does not set up tax breaks and other incentives to help low-income homeowners keep their houses, the proposed 22-mile loop of park and trails ringing downtown will create a circle of wealth and an outer ring of concentrated poverty, warns the Georgia Tech professor who conducted the analysis."
"'The Beltline is a great idea - unless we're going to build it on the backs of poor folks,' said Dan Immergluck, an expert on real estate and community development. 'If it's just going to be for one income, higher incomes and people with shiny new homes, from a public policy perspective, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.'"
"Immergluck's analysis of six years of housing data show a hyper-gentrification and property speculation around the proposed Beltline, as large developers and smaller speculators have bought up property."
Thanks to A. Lamar Calloway
